Brainhack Vancouver

From June 22-24 I was at the OHBM Hackathon 2017 in Vancouver and pitched a project to implement the distribution for cbstools-python. I mostly hoped that some of the folks there had some advice, but did not really expect anyone to get overly excited about joining this pretty specific project. Turns out I still underestimate the power of brainhack — right after the pitch kofalt came up to me and said he would love to join.

Within two & 1/2 intense and fun days we managed to pool his expertise on software packaging and distribution, my recently acquired knowledge about PyPI and what we want for cbstools-python, and some helpful insights from other brainhackers into a single, but powerful script. It performs the following essential steps:

  1. Download the MIPAV and JIST dependencies (should become redundant soon)

  2. Compile the Java code

  3. Wrap the Java classes using JCC

  4. Build the right folder structure and finally a wheel

This automates all steps necessary for continuous integration and distribution via PyPI. It will need to be adapted once the high-level Python interfaces have been added and we have decided on the final code organization. Also a few small issues regarding continuous integration are still to be solved. But it is still a massive step forward and much more than I ever expected to get done in that short time.

As usual, I left brainhack tired but thrilled: about this awesome, inspiring community, and about having learned more in a few days than in a regular month or more back at university. If you are into neuroscience and coding, you should definitely check out the next brainhack in your region, or just organize one yourself.